It has pricing that could cause Sony some embarrassing moments!

Meta has announced its third-generation Quest headset, which looks promising. The Meta Quest 3 features the highest-resolution display and slim pancake optics to make the content look better than ever. To power the extra pixels, Meta has teamed up with Qualcomm, as the headset features a next-generation Snapdragon chipset with more than twice the graphics performance of the Snapdragon GPU in the Quest 2, giving smoother performance and sharp detail in immersive games.

In Quest 3, best-in-class Meta Reality technology allows us to connect the physical world with the virtual seamlessly. These new experiences go beyond today’s mixed reality by intelligently understanding and responding to objects in our physical space, allowing us to navigate space in a natural, intuitive way that was previously nearly impossible. High-fidelity color translation, innovative machine learning, and spatial understanding will enable us to interact with virtual content and the physical world simultaneously, creating unlimited possibilities for discovery. We can play a virtual board game on the kitchen table in Demeo, upgrade the living room with virtual art in Painting VR, or immerse ourselves in a fully immersive world where we can do otherwise impossible activities. Quest 3 brings Meta Reality to even more people at a lower price point, making it the first mainstream product from Meta to offer cutting-edge VR and MR (Mixed Reality) experiences on a single device, setting a new benchmark for future headsets.

With a 40% thinner optical profile than the previous generation Quest, Meta Quest 3 is a slimmer, more comfortable headset. The Touch Plus controllers have also been redesigned with a more streamlined, ergonomic design. Thanks to advances in tracking technology, external tracking rings have been removed, so the controllers feel like a more natural extension of our hand and take up less space. They also use TruTouch haptics, introduced in Touch Pro, to make the action feel like never before. For a premium experience, there are fully self-tracking Meta Quest Touch Pro controllers. Hand tracking will be supported by default so that we can explore the world without controllers, thanks to Direct Touch, allowing us to interact with virtual objects using our hands.

Meta hasn’t forgotten about backward compatibility either, with Quest 3 already compatible with more than 500 of Quest 2’s VR games, apps, and experiences, and with even more exciting new VR and MR games in the pipeline, Meta says Quest 3 will have the world’s best library of experiences from day one. In 2020, Meta Quest 2 changed the face of VR, opening up new eras for gaming and fitness, for example. This product is one of the cheapest ways to enter virtual reality, but the pricing will continue to improve! From June 4, Meta will reduce the price of Quest 2 to $300/350 depending on whether you buy the 128 or 256 GB edition. They will be more robust thanks to better software. With firmware coming soon, the Quest 2 and Quest Pro’s GPU and CPU will be boosted.

CPU performance will increase by up to 26% for the Quest 2 and Pro, and GPU speed by up to 19% for the Quest 2 and 11% for the Quest Pro. As developers take advantage of these changes, both headsets will deliver smoother gameplay, a more responsive UI, and richer content. Dynamic resolution scaling has been enabled for Quest 2 and Quest Pro, so games and applications can take advantage of the increased pixel density without frame dropout. While Meta Quest 3 sets a new benchmark for mixed reality, immersive gaming, and mainstream virtual reality headsets, Quest 2 will continue to be the most affordable entry into virtual reality, and Pro is optimized for work use cases, with face and eye tracking for more authentic expressions in meetings. The Quest 2 and Pro will continue to be sold alongside the Quest 3, and firmware updates will also be released.

The Meta Quest 3 will launch in 2023. It will be $500 for the 128GB model, and since it won’t require a PC, Sony should prepare because not only does the PlayStation VR2 need a PlayStation 5, the PSVR2 itself is more expensive than the console!

Source: Gematsu